Completion

 Feeling quite frowsy today after a busy weekend!

Great news, the patio is now completed, I'm thrilled with how it looks. We are debating whether to keep the old round table and chairs. It was a wedding present and made before everything was made in China - hence it's still standing after 22 years. However, with our shiny new table it's not really needed because the new table has more comfortable chairs and is more practical.

Actually it's quite a cool table because it extends out to seat another 2 people. I was impressed with that. However, doubtless it was made in China and therefore it's likely it will fall apart in 2 years. So we'll keep the old table until we're sure.

It's been amazing having the patio done actually - we've already had our moneys worth out of it. On sons birthday we had a massive water fight out there. You can see where our lawn is if you look at the top left of the picture. I can never quite be bothered to go up that high and the lawn is a slope anyway so you're limited with what you can do on it. Though when son was little it was amazing for water slides.

On the subject of son - well actually most of this post is on subject of son this week - he went back to school on Friday. After a long summer of bad weather (until last week), he's been stuck in the house being very teenagery throughout the holiday. It seems strange not having him around. Though he's old enough now that whilst I'm working there are no interruptions etc.

I left him to organise his own birthday party. He then waited until 3 days beforehand to invite his friends. Needless to say they were all busy. So the birthday party was a week later, this weekend. The night before I asked what they were all doing and he still hadn't made his mind up.

So I ordered nibbles and waited to find out. In the end 4 friends turned up - I drove them to the marina as they were going to the cinema. It was a 2 car journey. I took son and one of his friends and husband took the others. We were 100m from home when son suddenly realised he didn't have his wallet with him. So we turned around. I sat in the car and waited, and waited, and waited. Going into the house he couldn't find it. In the end he worked out how to do payments via his bank account on his phone.

My bank doesn't do that any more, which is a shame, I just don't trust Google enough to use Google Wallet - though I think I'm going to have to get over that. Especially as on Friday I drove into the village to go to the shop, was amazed by the easy journey and then I found a parking spot. It was destiny. No sooner had I parked than I realised I'd bought my mobile with me, but no money. I turned around and drove home. Repeating the journey was a nightmare - huge amounts of traffic and I couldn't find a single parking space and ended up having to do 3 circuits until somebody vacated their space.

Anyway, back to son. I dropped him and his friend off outside Asda, where his other friends were waiting and then ended up having to go into cinema to pay for them all. They are all at that age where they are partially self-sufficient, but the cinema seemed to defeat them. Organising popcorn and drinks I was presented with blank stares - as if they weren't sure they could make the decisions for themselves. It was the same when it came to choosing seats. In the end I poked them with sticks to make their own decisions and they coped admirably.

We've got something of an unseasonable heatwave at the moment. The summer this year was really hot, right up until the kids broke up for summer. It was then rainy and cold right up until they went back to school at which point the heatwave started. 

I mentioned the concept of a water fight before they went into the cinema and they all leapt at the idea. So whilst they were in the cinema I set up a huge water fight on the patio. After the cinema they all took themselves off for a cheeky Nandos (I've still never been myself), which was good because it meant I didn't have to feed them.

Once we'd picked them up we came back to ours and there was the mother of all water fights on the patio. Hoses, water pistols, buckets of water and water bombs. The state of the patio afterwards was terrible, but actually (and ironically) a quick hose down of the walls and everything looked ship shape again. How they didn't hurt themselves or break anything I don't kow.

I bought the fight to an end when our Deliveroo turned up. Husband and I had decided not to be in the house with the kids, but to enjoy a summers evening having a takeaway and a bottle of wine on the patio. It was a really lovely evening actually. Going in around midnight the kids were still going full throttle. So we told them to wind down and then we went to bed.

By the looks of the photos they didn't settle down very quickly. In fact one of their friends did crash out and fall asleep and it appears that the rest of them spent the whole night seeing how much they could balance on his head whilst he slept, taking photographs as they went.

Needless to say next morning they were all shattered. That didn't stop them from having a huge nerf gun battle though. I have to say - despite the mess it was great to see them all playing like kids. It'll only be a few months before they all become too kool for skool until they are about 21. 

Some of them (including son) were going on to a D&D event in Burgess Hill. This was quite good actually because it meant that by 11.00 the house was completely empty.

Then the clean up began. And my oh my what a clean-up.

I think I'm going to have to go to the dump again at lunchtime, I was really careful that everything was recyclable, but we have about 4 bin bags of recycling.  

As well as all of this going on, dog has gone on heat. Whenever she is on heat she's an absolute floosy so I have to be really careful. I took her for a lead walk, but knew she hadn't had enough exercise. So I ended up throwing balls for her in the back garden for about an hour to tire her out. It's going to be strange in 3 weeks when I start doing our normal walk through the woods again. Everything will have changed from summer to Autumn.

Hopefully today the people will come to fix the tiles on the roof (scaffolders for solar panels trashed roof). We've been waiting for weeks. We only ended up with a promise they'd come today because we said we'd get another contractor and bill them. I'm dubious they will arrive and this is worrying because after heat comes lots and lots of rain. We've already got water p'ing through the ceiling.

Anyway, that's it for this week. Hopefully life will calm down soon.